Protecting your food in the Andes?

if you see the Andean beer in Bolivia, please tell me!!! you would be one of a handfull spotting them in a year in whole Bolivia as rare as they are!!! They evade people like hell, don´t worry

And there aren´t any squirrls in Bolivia either, what you will see (if you´re lucky) are Viscachas (look like a mixtutre of a rabbit and a squrirel), but they won´t attack your tent (don´t like people either)

The biggest danger for your food are other people :), we camped in a little town on the Takesi and stupid me forgot the food on the table, next morning it was gone, but the thieves were so nice to line up our plates and cups a bit further down along the trail after they had finished dinner......

I (nearly) always have my food wrapped up in a waterproof plastic sack in my tent, never had a problem (except when I forgot to do this once)

Agree with above. Camped many nights in Andes and never a problem with animals (or people in my case)

ok meant the Andean bear

I trekked in Patagonia and the biggest threat was mice at popular campsites. They chew their way through your tent to get to your food. That's more annoying than losing the food.

never had a problem with mice either :)

One thing to watch out for is, don’t start cooking in your tent then bring it back to bear country. I have a tent for British Columbia and a tent that stays in Santiago in Chile for South America, that one I cook in the vestibule all the time the tent in Canada is never cooked in. Europeans run into this problem with their tents regularly here in BC, the tent was used in Europe and maybe Asia then brought to Bear country and they wonder why with their food cached they have problems.

So should I just bring it inside my tent? or keep it in the vestibule?

Just to repeat, you will not have problems in Central Andes - never seen any sign of mice there in tents. Patagonia may be different. As a European I was not aware of the problem posted by#6 though we did not have a problem in California when we hung our food from trees but cooked in the front of the tent. You will have to make your own judgement on that based on your past experience in California and where you plan to use the tent in the future.

I bring it always into my tent, never had a problem, animals are really your leeast worry in the Andes

the only animal you´ll have to be careful of are watch/sheperd dogs :

throw a stone in their direction, normally keeps them away, if that doesn´t help there´s no other possibilities than painful body hits